


Seabirds

by jeweniper



Category: Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: Café, Canon Universe, F/F, I forgot canonically the town has no damn cafe omg, can I get uhhhhhhhhhh, cheesy symbolism, i almost made a new pseud for this, implied but not explored past unrequited youchika and marikanan, what a mouthful of a tag that was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 07:29:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9711113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeweniper/pseuds/jeweniper
Summary: When Mari and You start to get close, it's because misery loves company. Or was it company loves company?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I only considered writing f/f as half a joke....of course this is nothing but youmari should have more content hahahaha. When Mari speaks English it'll be in italics. Anyway this is a first for me, but I hope you enjoy it.

“Ugh. I can’t believe this weather!” You grips the hot chocolate in one hand and roughly rubs one of her stinging ears with the other.

“Hmm, I told you that baseball cap wouldn’t do you any good! _Useless_.” Mari scolds her while sliding into the opposite side of the booth, but her tone is weightless. The earmuffs settled over her head are simple in design, with plush, plum-colored ends that just might be real rabbit fur.

“Well I don’t think I could pull something off like that,” she chuckles, gesturing loosely at the earmuffs.

Mari tuts, features slipping into a childish pout. “That’s not a very _shiny_ way to think.” She looks over the edge of her tea into the hazy windowpane, muttering, “you’re plenty cute, You-chan.”

Her lips pull into a young smile, which she swallows in a mouthful of semisweet cocoa. Eccentric as she may appear, Mari has always been kind. “So anyway,” she dunks a hand into her bag, idly shifting pens, gum, and a squishy stress ball aside before retrieving her spiral notebook. Flipping through a few pages, she leans over the table. “Do you think this concept will work for the next live? I figured this color scheme would look good on everybody…” She glances up after Mari remains quiet for a few moments. From this angle her green eyes take on the golden sheen of the fluorescent lights, swallowing her in a field of summer grass. The heat crowds around her skin softly. She straightens her bangs where they have bunched up beneath the edge of her hat, studies the slight curve of her own fingers. “No good?”

“Mm-mm. Your concept seems _super great_ , but…I didn’t really invite you out for work, you know.” Mari smiles at her kindly, gaze bright. Like a storefront display, her expression is inviting, yet unopen. You idly scratches the side of her neck, does not feel—again—a desire to know what she’s really thinking, to follow the pull of that slight crosswind.

“As expected!” She grins, nudging the notebook back into her bag. It’s exam season, so they’ve cut practices back to a longer morning commitment and only afternoon practice every other day, just until the big tests are out of the way. You traces the gardenias drawn on her cup and remembers how she’d started when Mari had invited her out, before catching herself. She’d known it probably wasn’t for Aqours-related business, but thought it would be good to remind herself. They’re just friends. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“Oh, _fantastic_!” Mari accepts the lemon cheesecake from the waitress with a grateful smile, like she’d been saved from some measure of imminent starvation. She chuckles and Mari rounds on her before she can cover it up. “Laugh all you want; this cheesecake is life-changing.” The mischievous glint in her eye disappears with her first bite, flickering away in a blind show of absolute pleasure. You looks away from the curve of her lashes to inspect the cake, but her gaze latches instead onto the dip of her collarbone, visible beneath the chain of her elegant necklace. It is a simple thing with a silver bird holding a singular jewel in its beak that is the same blue as the wide ocean, as her own eyes. “—ite?”

“Uh, w-what?” She all but leaps inside the vinyl upholstery at the far end of her booth, face warming innocently beneath the light tan still left on her skin in these winter months. Forcing herself to look at the arching confusion of Mari’s smile, she doesn’t think about the fairness of her skin or the slope of her neck or how she already went through this with Chika and why can’t she _stop thinking of her friends like this holy cow_.

“I said,” Mari repeats, lip twitching with humor, “do you want a bite?” The hold on her fork is lazy and loose, the way she drapes herself over Kanan or Dia or even You sometimes, after practice. An elegant, confident slant, a seagull careening towards the waves. One of the tines clings to a few graham cracker crumbs from the crust, and she can see a bit of the cake’s residue leftover from where Mari’s tongue must have missed it. The image comes to her unbidden, of Mari’s tongue sliding over the fork to—

“Not now, thanks!” She gulps more of her hot chocolate, winces at the burn against her lips, at the scorching lick just inside of them.

Mari hums softly, the note angled like a question, and scoots closer to the window on her own side of the booth. She is directly across from You now, who can see her gazing out into the pale evening light in the corner of her eye. In the window’s reflection, Mari appears smaller, less like the intimidatingly beautiful and charismatic upperclassman she has come to know. Her form is less sharp, a trick of the light. “How are things? How are other two?” She asks, sipping her tea, cheesecake abandoned beside her.

“Good.” She’s talking about Riko and Chika, of course, an issue that in the end she could only discuss with Mari. “I think they’re doing a study date today.” A light drizzle taps against the glass, like an afterthought of the clouds.

“Interesting, isn’t it? How we only got closer after failed loves.” She huffs against the window, making everything more opaque.

“Well it’s not like yours failed, right?” She looks at her, finally, head dipping towards the table. She had gotten over her crush on Chika long ago, but hadn’t asked much about Mari. In all honesty, it became tougher to ask as time went on. Now the thought of hearing her pine over Kanan or anyone was unbearable, selfish as she knew it was. She looks down at her drink and takes a sip, lets the rapidly cooling liquid slither down to her stomach.

“I wonder,” she murmurs, drawing something in the fog she has created. “My friendship is saved, yet the one person I really want to get close to seems to reject me every time. Rather painful, to be honest.” She blinks back at You, curls into herself slightly, but her smile is warm and You is reminded of the summer grasses, the graceful flight of seagulls. Mari had come from the above in their first meeting, actually. Sea and sky, how nice that could be.

She blinks. Wait. “Reject you?”

Mari doesn’t move. “ _It’s joke?”_

She makes a quick mental tally of the times Mari has gone out of her way to spend time with anyone (which she knows embarrassingly well since she was paying attention), and let’s her breath out in a whoosh. It rustles Mari’s hair, stirs it along the bird on the necklace. “Mari I wouldn’t… _me?_ ”

They say nothing as the waitress comes by and refills their water glasses, staring at each other until she steps far beyond their booth in the corner of the restaurant, the corner of the world. Suddenly Mari is leaning forwards again, spearing a new hunk of cheesecake onto her fork.

“I’m not sure though. The person I like can be so _difficult_ to read.” She brings the utensil closer to her still gaping lips, the dessert perched at the edge like a baited breath. “Maybe I just need a sign. What do you think?” She doesn’t break eye contact, leaning with the fork’s trajectory as if she intends to follow it right into her mouth.

You feels the cream melt on her tongue and chases its remains with the close of her lips, since she can’t seem to break away from Mari’s warm eyes. They are impossibly close to each other, and she can’t decide if that warmth is from proximity or a traitorous flush swimming laps under her skin. Honestly, she doesn’t care. “It’s good." Her voice is softer than she expects, almost dazed. "I think the signs are good, Mari.”

Something light floats from the tips of Mari’s lips to the lights in her eyes. “Really?”

“Oh yes. In fact,” that same lightness falls like a feather on You’s own lips, teases them up into a matching smile, “in fact I think you should keep getting close to her. Maybe you two should head to the ocean, when the weather’s a little better.”

“The ocean? With all those _shiny_ and adorable seabirds, I quite like that.”

“I think I do to.”

 

 

 


End file.
